DISTINGUISHED CLERGYMEN.
One clergyman claims separate notice as a foreigner, a poor pluralist, and an exceedingly popular preacher. Dr. Horneck, a native of Bacharach—so familiar to all Rhine tourists—held, in conjunction with a stall at Exeter worth only twenty pounds a year, the preachership of the Savoy, which afforded but a miserable income. His poverty ended three years before his death, when, through the united kindness of Queen Mary and Archbishop Tillotson, he was made Prebendary of Westminster. But from first to last his ministry was exceedingly popular; it was no easy matter for him to get through the crowd to his pulpit. So great was the number of communicants at his church, that he had to seek the help of clergymen in the delivery of the bread and wine, “and with such assistance it was very late before the congregation could be dismissed.”[401] His virtues are extolled in the epitaph inscribed on his monument in the Abbey.
1688–1702.
Leaving men of honourable renown, in order to throw in truthful shadows amidst grateful lights, I will mention a case of their fanaticism. It appears in the life of John Mason, Rector of Walter Stratford, in Buckinghamshire.[402] Holding Predestinarian opinions to such an extent as to acknowledge no other difference between Judas and St. Peter than what proceeded from absolute decrees and irresistible grace; and further believing that it was all one whether a man kept the commandments or broke them, inasmuch as Christ observed the whole law on behalf of His people; this strange mortal, who had drunk the dregs of Antinomianism, added to his absurd caricatures of Calvinism, other ideas equally extravagant respecting the personal reign of Christ—a reign which he expected would instantly be set up. So far as extreme Predestinarianism and Millenarianism are concerned, he may be taken as typical of a small section of religious teachers living then, not entirely extinct even now; but he proceeded to the excess of regarding himself as a favoured recipient of celestial visions. Not long before his death, he fancied he saw Christ clothed in a crimson garment, His countenance exceedingly beautiful, with an abundance of sweetness and great majesty. Relatives indignantly denied a charitable report that he was mad, and did not doubt he would prove the prophet of the age—a Noah to warn the world, a John the Baptist to herald in the Messiah, an Elijah sent before the just and terrible day. Beyond his own circle, belief in his predictions spread, until nigh a hundred followers from the country ten miles round came to the rectory, and took up their abode within and around it, waiting for a revelation, which it was said came on the 16th of April, 1694, in the manner described. “When I entered the house,” relates one who wrote an account of his visit, “a more melancholy scene of a spiritual Bedlam presented itself. Men, women, and children running up and down, onewhile stretching their arms upwards to catch their Saviour coming down, others extending them forward to meet His embraces; a third, with a sudden turn, pretends to grasp Him; and a fourth clapping their hands for joy they had Him; with several other antic postures, which made me think that Bedlam itself was but a faint image of their spiritual frenzies. All this while they were singing as loud as their throats would give them leave, till they were quite spent and looked black in the face.”[403] Fanaticism, more insane than ever possessed any of the Roundhead preachers in Oliver Cromwell’s camp, thus raged in the person of an episcopal clergyman under William III. Country folks crowded about his house, his barn, and his garden; hundreds more are said to have venerated his character and believed in his prophecies. The story affords an instance of the wild enthusiasm which it is in the power of extravagant visionaries to excite, even in an age commonly considered as rationalistic and cold.[404]
DISTINGUISHED CLERGYMEN.
It is very remarkable, in casting one’s eye over these sketches, to notice the absence of the old Puritan party. Hall, of Oxford, as already noticed, was the only Divine of that class on the Bishops’ Bench; and amongst names of repute belonging to the rest of the Clergy, not one of the same kind can be produced. I do not deny that there may be clerical publications of the period marked by Puritan divinity; I only say that the celebrated authors were of another description.
1688–1702.
Vigorous and commanding Puritanic thought, such as moved the religious intellect of England a generation or two earlier, for a time quite died out in the Establishment. Low Churchmanship had been of the Puritan type. Montague, Laud, and the like, found their opponents in Calvinistic clergymen. Now Low Churchmanship took what some would call a rationalistic form; at any rate its advocates were inspired by a philosophical theology, rather than by the institutes of Calvin, or the genius of Geneva. Sancroft and Hicks found their opposites in Tillotson and Burnet. The Act of Uniformity had clearly done its work, and shut or kept out teachers akin to Calamy and Marshall. Their theological spirit, their distinctive evangelical teaching, disappears, so far as the Established Church is concerned, like the stream of Arethusa, and flows underground for a considerable space, to burst out once more in a strong current, a century afterwards.
CHAPTER XIV.
Attempts were not wanting on the part of some of the Bishops to maintain ecclesiastical discipline. There are papers amongst the Tanner MSS. which indicate what went on amidst the throes of the Revolution, in the diocese of Norwich, before the ejectment of Bishop Lloyd. John Gibbs, Rector of Gissing, had been a convert to the Church of Rome; but on the 14th of November, nine days after the landing of the Prince of Orange, when Protestant East Anglicans would be exulting at the advent of the Deliverer, this recusant is referred to as wishing to be reconciled with the Church of his fathers; and a report is given of the sermon which he preached on the occasion.[405] A little while afterwards an instance occurs of clerical immorality, and of that kind of trouble which has often disturbed episcopal peace: a Norwich rector was accused of “lewdness,” amounting to a capital crime.